Elite education is seen as the key to success, and New Zealand’s latest unicorn, Crimson Education, is showing students how.
If you thought you would be four times more likely than the average applicant to be accepted into one of the eight Ivy League universities in the US or to Cambridge or Oxford in the UK, what would you be prepared to do?
New Zealand’s latest NZ$1 billion unicorn, Crimson Education, has created a program that claims that level of success for its applicants from around the world.
Co-founder Sharndre Kushor (pictured above), 28, admits the company does not guarantee success.
“It’s a really competitive process. We focus on making sure students are the best candidates and best versions of themselves. Our students are four times more likely to get into Ivy League schools than the overall average,” Kushor says.
In their first year, Kushor and co-founders Jamie Beaton and Fangzhou Jiang, “bootstrapped it”, with just $150 in capital at the beginning to set up a website.
“At the end of the first year of running the business we thought if we had a bit of capital we could get better technology and resources and that’s when we did our first raise. At the end of 2014, angel investors came in and Julian Robertson, one of the founding fathers of hedge funds in the US [who died, aged 90, in August], and one of the people he trained and set up Tiger Global Management, invested in us in that first raise. It was an exciting start, given we were really just solving a problem that we had experienced.”
Kushor loved the academics while at school and was studying pre-med at university when the idea came to her from students she was tutoring.
“I think young people and young women and particularly women of colour have been under-represented when it comes to achieving, so my journey, at 28 years old, being a woman of colour and founding a unicorn … I feel it is quite powerful.”
– Crimson Education co-founder Sharndre Kushor
“They were asking all the same questions. What should I study? Where do I go to do that? I had met five students who were going overseas to study. They were very aspirational. They were all going to study at Ivy League schools in the US. I wondered why I didn’t know about this opportunity sooner and I wanted to share it with the students I was tutoring,” Kushor says.
Pathway to success and financial aid
For many people, when they think about getting into an Ivy League school, it can often seem so unattainable, Kushor says.
“We’ve tried to make it something that people can see a pathway to achieve. That relates to financially as well. We have a big focus on supporting people to have access to a school’s financial aid. Last submission cycle, Crimson students received about US$26 million in financial aid that helped them to be able to be in classes with amazing lecturers and get access to great internships. “
Beyond the university admissions space, Crimson created an online school in 2020 after gaining a better understanding of what the elite universities were wanting from candidates. The platform enables students anywhere to extend their learning, with the help of 3000 mentors and dedicated teachers. Students can sign up for courses outside the curriculum that their schools offer.
“You could be a local student in NSW studying HSC, but you could also take papers through other curriculum, like IB (International Baccalaureate ) or AP (Advanced Placement). If you are applying to schools in the US or the UK that is an excellent way of standing out. It’s a way of showing that you are willing to extend yourself.
“Often, students think they want to do something really niche, so we have built the online school so they can investigate those subjects before they have to make those really tough decisions. They supplement what they are learning at their regular school.”
Kushor says a big part of building great candidacy for some of the most competitive schools is to show you are willing to take extra steps to build depth and breadth in your understanding.
“A big part of Crimson is about building your leadership skills and demonstrating your academic interests outside of the classroom. Interviews play a pretty significant part in the admissions process for many of these schools. A lot of it is about learning how to answer the interview questions. It’s a lot about self-discovery, gaining awareness of yourself, your interests, your leadership skills.”
The business has advisors including former US Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, and former New Zealand prime minister Sir John Key.
Foundation building
About 18 months ago, Kushor pulled back from her role as chief operating officer at Crimson and created The One Billion foundation, that aims to change a billion lives over the next 50 years. It spurred the creation of YourCycle, that helps women and girls to understand their menstrual health.
Kushor says she feels it is “important to open the conversations about these issues to be able to have empathy with those who are struggling with it”.
“I want to live in a world that has gender equality that allows us all to have access to opportunities that allow everyone to thrive.
“I think young people and young women and particularly women of colour have been under-represented when it comes to achieving, so my journey, at 28 years old, being a woman of colour and founding a unicorn … I feel it is quite powerful.
“I want to share my story to inspire others to do the same thing. I hope that in 10 years’ time, my story is more about the people I have encouraged to take a bigger leap and trust themselves to take a risk to do something that is extraordinary.”